The jurisdiction under Article 227 for reviewing commercial court orders is limited, primarily ensuring expedited resolution and not undermining legislative intent against interlocutory appeals.

JUDGMENT

Amit Bansal, J. (Oral)--The present petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India impugns the order dated 2nd March, 2021 passed by the Commercial Court South East District, Saket, New Delhi in Arbitration Petition No. 224/2018, whereby the application for condonation of delay in refiling the Section 34 petition on behalf of the respondents has been allowed subject to costs of Rs.5000/-.

2. Brief facts preceding the filing of the present petition are given as under:

(i) An award dated 8th December, 2017 was passed in an arbitration between the parties, whereby the sole arbitrator partly allowed the claims of the petitioners and dismissed the counter claims of the respondents.

(ii) On 10th April, 2018, the respondents filed a Section 34 petition against the said award and subsequently, refiled the said petition on various dates, being 24th April, 2018, 9th May, 2018 30th May, 2018 and 2nd June, 2018.

(iii) In each instance of filing, certain defects cropped up, which were made known to the respondents through e-mail by the Registry of this Court on 17th April, 2018, 25th April, 2018, 10th May, 2018 and 1st June, 2018.

(iv) Thereafter, the pecuniary jurisdiction of the Courts below was increased and the respondents filed a Section 34 petition before the Court of District Judge (Commercial), South East, Saket Court, New Delhi.

(v) The Commercial Court allowed the application for condonation of delay in filing the section 34 petition and imposed Rs.5,000/- costs on the respondents vide the impugned order dated 2nd March, 2021.

(vi) While allowing the said application, the Commercial Court noted that (i) the limitation period under Section 34(3) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 is in respect of filing an application for challenging the arbitral award and not for subsequent steps taken after the filing; (ii) it is settled law that time used up for resolving defects in a filing has to be condoned; and (iii) litigants should not suffer due to technicalities of the law.

(vii) Aggrieved by the said findings of the Commercial Court, the petitioners have approached this Court.

3. Mr. Ajay Kapur, senior counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioners has submitted that though the original petition under Section 34 was filed by the respondents within the period of 90 days, however, in view of the fact that essential documents such as statement of truth, affidavit, Vakalatnama, etc. were not filed, it was a non-est filing. Attention of the Court has been drawn to various objections put by the registry of this Court on 25th April, 2018, 10th May, 2018 and 1st June, 2018 to contend that the respondent was very casual and negligent in removing the objections marked by the Court and some of these objections went to the very root of the matter. Reliance is placed on the judgments in O.M.P. (COMM) No. 97/2019 titled Oil And Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. Vs. Joint Venture of M/S Sai Rama Engineering Enterprises (SREE) & M/S Megha Engineering & Infrastructure Ltd. (MEIL), OMP (COMM) 380/2019 titled Oil And Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. Vs. Planetcast Technologies Ltd. and O.M.P (COMM.) 132/2019 titled SKS Power Generation (Chhattisgarh) Ltd. Vs. ISC Projects Private Limited.

4. Accordingly, it is submitted by the petitioners that the Commercial Court has failed to take into account the aforesaid judgments and therefore the order is erroneous.

5. Mr. Amit Khemka, counsel appearing on behalf of the respondents has taken a preliminary objection that the present petition is barred in terms of S